| Xyrax said: I rebuke you! In the name of the lawd! |
Yeah, that's great.
But here's the reality of the situation: most RPGs have only ONE thing standing in the way of you completing them and that, of course, is the amount of time you put in.
Normal games typically require you to learn a skill set within the game, something which requires you to adapt to the internal logic of the game and play accordingly or fail miserably.
Take Super Mario Bros., for example: either you get good at jumping or you die horribly. This isn't a question. This isn't up for DEBATE, it's the actual case, plain and simple.
I make an exception for RPGs which involve real-time combat or at least button reflex tests which require that you press buttons at the right time or your characters take piles of damage and deal very little. I also make an exception for RPGs which make the bosses have a percentage of your stats as opposed to set stats, but even those are a bit too forgiving.
My point is, in your standard linear JRPG, skill seldom comes into play: the game uses your stats as criteria for a random number generator to determine the outcome of a fight.
With level grinding always being an option so you can superpower your characters into raw invincibility, the game is literally not allowing failure. Success is LITERALLY assured so long as you just keep playing the game.
Even Wii Sports with its casual-friendly nature isn't THAT forgiving. It's not like you can play 50 games of tennis and be unstoppable, even if you never learned how to get better and lost every single match. It takes a learned skill to succeed.
Traditional JRPGs may not be "casual" by the current definition, but they don't deserve to be called "hardcore" unless they bring skill into the equation somewhere and I've just played too many that absolutely do not. I'm not calling the genre into question for its fun factor because I've enjoyed RPGs in the past. It's just that I acknowledged that I wasn't exactly being challenged as a player as I did so.
"I mean, c'mon, Viva Pinata, a game with massive marketing, didn't sell worth a damn to the "sophisticated" 360 audience, despite near-universal praise--is that a sign that 360 owners are a bunch of casual ignoramuses that can't get their heads around a 'gardening' sim? Of course not. So let's please stop trying to micro-analyze one game out of hundreds and using it as the poster child for why good, non-1st party, games can't sell on Wii. (Everyone frequenting this site knows this is nonsense, and yet some of you just can't let it go because it's the only scab you have left to pick at after all your other "Wii will phail1!!1" straw men arguments have been put to the torch.)" - exindguy on Boom Blocks
